bartl
04-06-2005, 05:48 AM
While he does better than most, Grant does not quite get the importance of Heisenberg's Uncertainty Principle. It was well-known before Heisenberg gave his contribution that measuring an entity adds information to that entity, and that if the information added to the entity is significance, it interferes with the measurement.
What Heisenberg did was to show that there is a calculable margin of error when one tries to simultaneously measure the position and momentum of a particle. For those who are not into calculus, let's use a real world example. In engineering, there is what is known as "tolerances". Take a screw; if you make a screw too thick, it won't fit in the socket. If you make it too thin, it will not fit in tightly. But there is a certain small margin for error, where two screws, not precisely the same size, will both still fit in the socket (one of the reason why you hear about the "$10,000 hammer" in government contracts is partially because, when you have to have equipment that is used in places where you can't go to the corner store for a replacement, and lives depend on it, the tolerances are much smaller, and there's a rule of thumb in engineering, where the last 10% accounts for half the total cost).
What Heisenberg did was to show that there is a calculable margin of error when one tries to simultaneously measure the position and momentum of a particle. For those who are not into calculus, let's use a real world example. In engineering, there is what is known as "tolerances". Take a screw; if you make a screw too thick, it won't fit in the socket. If you make it too thin, it will not fit in tightly. But there is a certain small margin for error, where two screws, not precisely the same size, will both still fit in the socket (one of the reason why you hear about the "$10,000 hammer" in government contracts is partially because, when you have to have equipment that is used in places where you can't go to the corner store for a replacement, and lives depend on it, the tolerances are much smaller, and there's a rule of thumb in engineering, where the last 10% accounts for half the total cost).